A trip through the year looking at a Bach cantata each week. Comments, discussions, musings, wibblings are all welcome.

Tuesday, 6 November 2012

Ich Armer Mensch (cantata for the twenty-second Sunday after Trinity)- Passion in the workshop

First
thoughts aren't always best, in music or in life. Lawn tennis was
originally called Sphairistike by
its inventor, an Englishman with more eye to the Classics than
marketing. Christopher
Wren's original design for the dome of St Paul's Cathedral had an
enormous golden pineapple on top. But Bach is different. His first
thoughts are good enough to cherish. Cantata No.55, Ich
Armer Mensch is a masterpiece in
its own right. But it also shows how Bach's thoughts were working
towards what is arguably the greatest piece of music ever written-
the St Matthew Passion.

The
cantata isn't easy to listen to- but great music usually isn't (be
quiet, Mozart). We start off with self-condemnation. A single tenor
voice at the extremes of his range confesses that he is an armerMensch- a wretched,
worthless man. Indeed, he is a Suenden-knecht. Worse
than simply being sin's slave, the world knecht
implies that he is sin's henchman, willing and helpful.

After
a brief recitative, we're at the emotional heart of the cantata- a
near desolate call on God. Erbarme dich, have
mercy, heed our tears, soften your heart, only have mercy on us! The
picture is only softened slightly in the last recitative, where the
singer states that he will not be judged, but only by holding up the
image of Jesus' own suffering will he be able to return to God's
grace. And the closing chorale gives a communal counterpoint to the
individual's anguish. But it's not a joyful expression of certain
redemption; instead, we are all on the first step of a long journey
of repentance:

I do not deny my
guilt,but Your grace and mercyis much greater than the
sinthat I constantly discover in me.

Not exactly cheery. So is this cantata hamstrung by an excess of
gloom and an emphasis on God's wrath over God's love? It's impossible
to deny there's an overall atmosphere of anguish. But this makes
perfect sense if we look at the deep resonances with the St Matthew
Passion. Bach wrote this cantata to be performed in St Thomas's,
Leipzig on 17 November 1726. The Passion was first performed less
than five months later in the same church. By comparing the cantata
to the Passion, we can see Bach's thought processes as he honed and
polished his material. And by looking at the cantata in the light of
the Passion, we can understand that strange gloomy Lutheran theology.

At the very beginning of the cantata, we hear a repeated
crotchet-quaver heartbeat pattern in the bass. (Ignore the slurring-
Bach didn't write it, only a 19th century editor).

(Bass part of Ich Armer Mensch, First movement, bars 4-6)

This is rhythmically identical to the bass line of the Passion's
opening chorus:

(Bass part of the St Matthew Passion, bars
1-3)

So from the very opening, Bach is
creating a similar musical effect- a pulsating, nervous beat. Not all
the recordings bring this out: it's very obvious in Fabio Biondi's
impassioned reading with Ian Bostridge as the singer, but it's pretty
much lost in Gustav Leonhardt's stern scholarly version. Either way,
it's definitely there in the score. There's an even more obvious
correspondence between the cantata and the Passion. We saw that the
heart of the cantata was a desperate call to God: Erbarme
dich, have mercy. A solo
instrument weeps with the singer in music of unutterably sad beauty;

(Ich
Armer Mensch, 3rd
movement, solo tenor line, bars 6-7)

And, at the centre of the Passion
is a desperate call to God, Erbarme
dich, etc. etc.,
unutterably sad... I'm sure you get the picture, but there's no
better evidence of the close correspondence between the pieces than
the first vocal entries. (Apologies for the awkward break between "Er-" and "barme"- the page turn in the score flummoxed my rudimentary HTML skills!):

(St
Matthew Passion, No. 47,
solo alto bars 8-10)

It's not just that they have the
same opening text and penitential tone. The melodies are almost
identical! Both the cantata version and the Passion version start
with that yearning leap from “er”
to “bar”
of a minor sixth. Then
there's a downward movement on “bar”
and a little turn of a semitone on “me”
to “dich”-
identical in both
pieces.

Of course, Bach is too good to just copy things out completely. There
are a few magical differences. Most obviously, the tune is given to
an alto in the Passion rather than a tenor in the cantata. But this
difference isn't as significant as it might seem. Bach used young men
for both voice parts, although his alto's voice might not have broken
yet. (Back in those good old days of malnutrition, it wasn't uncommon
for 17 and 18 year old men to be singing high treble parts still. Now
we feed choirboys up and cathedral choir directors suddenly find that
they have a load of 12-year old baritones.)

Bach did put an extra flat on the
second note of “bar”
in the cantata version; that gives it a little more dissonant pain
compared to the serenity of the Passion version. That Passion version
also has some more passing notes and swings along in a lilting triple
time. By contrast, the cantata melody is much starker in four-square
metre. But the two melodies are sisters, even though the cantata
version has an intriguing beauty spot and the Passion version has
more sensual curves.

But there's yet another link
between the cantata and the Passion. After the ErbarmeDich
aria and a short recitative, the cantata closes with the chorale, Bin
ich gleich von dir gewichen. And
the same sequence occurs in the Passion: its own Erbarme
Dich aria is followed
immediately by exactly the same chorale as in the cantata. The
chorale harmony is slightly different, admittedly- but the words,
melody and theological message are carried straight over.

And from this we can read back the
context that gives some explanation to the seemingly harsh words of
the cantata. In the Passion, Peter sings Erbarme
Dich- have mercy- and
the chorus sings that chorale from the cantata at the very blackest
depths of his desolation, when he has not only failed to protect
Jesus from arrest but denied him three times. Peter realises that he
is indeed the armer
Mensch, the henchman of
sin; he goes and and weeps bitterly. But it's actually a moment of
hope. At this point, the trajectory of descent into self-hatred
is arrested; Peter accepts his guilt, and his sin is accepted for
what it is.

And so in the light of the Passion, we can see why the opening of the
cantata is so terrified, so ludicrously self-abnegating to our
twenty-first century ears. In the scene of Peter's denial and
subsequent grief, Bach would delineate the darkest part of human
conversion; the recognition that God loves sinners astheyare and as a whole, with all the shame and baggage that we
would like to lock away. So in late 1726, Bach is using the
cantata as a sort of workshop to intimately explore a central theme
he would bring out just a few months later when writing the St
Matthew Passion in early 1727. The cantata clearly allowed Bach to
turn his musical genius to that theme earlier.

But in the end, it would be a mistake to look at the cantata as an
“out-take” or a dry run for the greater piece of music It has its
own life and spiritual profundity. The fact that the cantata is sung
by only one soloist allows us to identify with him as Everyman,
speaking for a whole community. And the links to the Passion give
every man and woman in Bach's congregation the opportunity to
identify with Peter. Frightened by their own great unrighteousness,
yes; but ultimately loved and saved through a greater grace.